Over the weekend, we saw the first poll showing that despite the desperate right-wing spin and pliant Beltway press corp, a felony conviction is, in fact, not a good thing for Donald Trump.
I did some basic electoral math on that Morning Consult poll: Trump has never hit 47% of the vote, and he’s done nothing to build on that, thus making his path to victory quite difficult. To win, he needs a combination of a strong third party vote, depressed Democratic turnout, and outsized performances in the seven battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
It’s not an impossible task! He pulled off his improbable victory in 2016, garnering just 45.9% of the national vote, but everything had to go right for him. In 2020, he couldn’t manage to repeat it even with all the advantages of incumbency. And despite rampant doomsaying in some Democratic circles, it’ll be tough for him as well this year.
In short, Trump has no margin of error, and any bleed in his support is near catastrophic. So pray tell, how could a felony conviction help him?
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